Perl Program That Read From .conf File

Crashed_Again · 12-05-2003, 04:40 PM

I just started to mess around with Perl because I desperatly need to learn a language for small scripts. The first script I need to write is a program that uploads a few files to an ftp server. I wanted to create a .conf file that would store all the variables. The conf file looks like this:

Code:

# What is the address of the ftp server you want to connect to?
# EXAMPLE: www.domain.org

$WebAddress = www.domain.org

# What is the username for the ftp server?
# EXAMPLE: username

$UserName = username

# What is the password for the user?
# EXAMPLE: password

$Password = password

# What file(s) would you like to upload to the server?
# EXAMPLE: webcam_image.jpg

$WebcamImage = shiner.jpg
$WebcamImageThumbnail = thb_shiner.jpg

Now I know how to do all the ftp stuff in the program but I'm unsure how to read this .conf file in the Perl program. Basically I want the program to read the .conf file and ignore everything that begins with # and all the blank lines.

How would you do this?

eric.r.turner · 12-05-2003, 06:28 PM

Here's what you want! If you aren't familiar with them, then you'll need to learn regular expressions to be a competent Perl programmer.

Code:

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

my $filename = 'foobar.conf';
my $comment = '^\s*#';
my $blank = '^\s*$';
my $inputLine;

open( FILE , $filename ) or die "Unable to open $filename.\n";

while ( $inputLine = <FILE> ) {

   chomp( $inputLine );

   if ( $inputLine !~ /$comment/ &&
        $inputLine !~ /$blank/ ) {

      # Found a non-blank, non-commented line. Do something useful.
      print( "$inputLine\n" );
   }
}

close( FILE );

Crashed_Again · 12-07-2003, 06:49 AM

Thanks man. I've successfully created the script that I wanted to do.

Muchos gracias.